Panzer Corps 2 News

Achtung Panzer Generals.

We have a grab bag of goodies to share in this news update today.

In the latest Panzer Corps 2 patch, we’ve got some general fixes and improvements for the game, some fine tuning adjustments for the recent Fall of Poland campaign, but most excitingly and also the focus of this announcement is the release of four brand new scenarios for all owners of Panzer Corps 2 to enjoy... at no additional cost and with no DLC ownership required. Consider these scenarios as our holiday gift to you, our players and community, who have kept Panzer Corps going and going for over 13 years and counting. Thank you once again, and we hope you enjoy the scenarios even more than these previews of them we have for you today.

Change log:

• Added 4 new single scenarios: End in Poland, Attu, Imphal, and Rhone River
  
• Fixed a few minor issues in War Stories: Fall of Poland campaign
  

The first scenario we’d like to cover is fittingly set to the current season and takes place during a stormy winter battle, the Battle of Attu. In this scenario, you’ll get an opportunity to lead a joint US and Canadian force in the struggle to liberate Attu, part of the Aleutian islands off the coast of Alaska, which had been occupied by the Japanese in June of ’42.



Be prepared for a very unique amphibious landing battle that actually takes place during a snowstorm, definitely a one-of-a-kind battle with that element in it. But that’s not the only surprise in store in this historical scenario, and we don’t want to spoil every surprise here in this reveal...



The second free scenario takes you back to Poland in 1939, but unlike the recent fall of Poland DLC, in the Battle of Kock you’ll be commanding German forces in the final battle of the Polish Campaign that marked the absolute end of organized Polish Resistance.



Expect to see many of the brand new units added during the Fall of Poland DLC to make their appearances here, as all of those units are included with the base game of Panzer Corps 2 and they are not directly tied to the campaign DLC purchase.



The next scenario in this free content pack moves to India, with the opening stages of the crucial Battle of Imphal, as played from a Japanese perspective. A large roster of Japanese units has been added to Panzer Corps 2 ever since the release of Axis Operations 1946, and that makes this scenario the first ever Panzer Corps 2 scenario with the Japanese as the playable faction.



In the Battle of Imphal, you’ll be fighting a very different kind of war compared to fighting across the plains of Europe or Steppes of Russia. Between your Japanese forces and their ultimate goal of Imphal are thick jungles and mountainous terrain that characterized the border between India and Burma. Good air support and plenty of units capable of fighting in dense terrain absolutely characterize the opening act of this battle. But as for what happens after the breakthrough, well that would be another spoiler...



And last but not least, we have one fictional scenario to join the previous three historical scenarios of this free content package. This one is set during June of 1940, at the end of the Battle of France. In this scenario, you’ll actually be playing as a French force, attempting to stall both German panzers and also Italian invaders from capturing more and more of France before an armistice is reached.



We hope you all enjoyed this preview of the pack of free scenarios being included in this latest Panzer Corps 2 patch. And to further celebrate, we’ll be putting Panzer Corps 2 on sale for anyone new who is interested in picking up the game to enjoy its wealth of hundreds of scenarios and many historical World War II campaigns.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1072040/Panzer_Corps_2/

Thank you once again to all our awesome players and to the community as a whole. We wish you all Happy Holidays and best wishes through the rest of winter. We’ll be right back with more news and updates to share very early next year.

The entire Panzer Corps 2 franchise is on sale on Steam with discounts of up to 60% off. Don't miss out and complete your collection, the sale runs until October 21st

Salutations, Panzer Generals.

It’s been a month since the debut of Panzer Corps 2’s latest DLC, and we wanted to take a moment to share some insider insights with our community.

First of all, we are continually amazed and humbled by the reception our work on Panzer Corps 2 receives. To the thousands of players who have embarked on Panzer Corps 2 campaigns, and even now continue to do so on a daily basis, we have nothing but the deepest appreciation for all of you; especially in this day and age of games being shut down from lack of interest and of players.

We’re always thrilled to read about your experiences with our campaigns, and look at screenshots and media of your campaign playthroughs. There really isn’t quite a feeling like the one we get when we read about the fun players are having with Panzer Corps 2; it’s our reward for all of the countless hours of work that goes into the planning, research, construction, and playtesting content for Panzer Corps 2.



Now that said, there have also been some very articulate criticisms in your player feedback, and while we enjoy bathing in the glow of fun and fuzzy positive vibes, it would be a disservice to ignore well constructed criticisms. Valid criticisms offer an opportunity to learn and grow. Afterall, it takes a really passionate fan to know, and care, enough about something to take their time to sit down and write about it in detail.

To keep this Developer Log on the short and sweet side though, there is just one of these criticisms I’d like to address directly, because I think it should be explained better, so you can see our developer perspective on what we are aiming for.

Something Panzer Corps 2 has been doing recently is to have some deliberately inaccurate or misleading objective design. Here is an example from Fall of Poland.



That objective to ‘Rally Encircled Border Guards’ is something players very quickly found out was seemingly impossible to achieve, and I’m here to tell you, yes, it is actually very much impossible. So don’t worry that you were unable to achieve it, that’s why we made that objective not hand out a ‘game over’ defeat screen.

So why is that objective listed? Well, when we put things like that into the campaigns, we’re trying to create some ‘fog of war’ with imperfect or incomplete information and directions. The history buffs among us know how many of the battles of World War II turn out, and have probably some inkling of how the recreations of many of those battles within Panzer Corps 2 will also probably be turning out.



But to actually be in that moment, your information would be incomplete. On the morning of September 1st 1939, the Polish soldier on the border with Germany doesn’t immediately know a full scale invasion is happening all across Poland. The only instruction you’ve been given is to alert and organize border defenses against some kind of incursion, and this realization that the border troops are completely overwhelmed and overrun well past any possibility to preserve or rally, that’s a window into the realization that bigger events are afoot than anyone in that place and in that moment in time would be aware of.

Bottom line though, we definitely recognize this sort of thing can be confusing to players, even if that confusion is by design, perhaps in the future it can be done in a way that is less anxiety producing and more mysterious and thematic. We’ll certainly keep that in mind moving forward, as we try our best to read and assimilate the player feedback we regularly receive.

We definitely have some very interesting ideas and plans still yet ahead for Panzer Corps 2, and we’ll be back to tell you all about them hopefully sooner than later.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

Panzer Corps 2: War Stories - Fall of Poland is out now, bringing a unique and refreshing perspective to the beloved World War II strategy series. This DLC departs from the usual focus on the Wehrmacht, instead centering on the Polish defenders during the 1939 invasion of Poland.

Players will take command of the Polish forces, tasked with resisting the German onslaught through a series of historically grounded scenarios. The campaign promises a deeply immersive experience, highlighting the courage and resilience of Poland in the face of overwhelming odds. With narrative-driven gameplay, "Fall of Poland" offers a compelling portrayal of one of the most significant early conflicts of World War II.

Fall of Poland is a must-play for strategy enthusiasts and history buffs, providing a new angle on the war by showcasing the struggle of the defenders rather than the invaders​

[h2]New Gameplay features coming in Fall of Poland[/h2]

• All new support for displaying images during mid-scenario messages
  
• A new ‘Key Character’ system to track the fate of unique individuals across the campaign
  
• Additional support for the Polish faction, including General’s Portraits, Hero Portraits, and Unit Award Medals
  
• 21 new units for Poland and Germany, ranging from modifications of existing vehicles such as the Panzer IID and TKS 20mm to unique Polish equipment of Uhlan Cavalry and even some ultra rare prototype aircraft
  

[h2]14 Scenario List[/h2]

• Krojanty
  
• Battle of Mlawa
  
• Battle of Westerplatte
  
• Bydgoszcz
  
• Early Warsaw
  
• Kutno Camp
  
• Strykow
  
• Lowicz
  
• Kampinoska Forest
  
• Escape from Warsaw
  
• Kowel
  
• Battle of Lwow
  
• Tomaszow Lubelski
  
• Cernauti 1939
  

https://store.steampowered.com/app/3023770/Panzer_Corps_2_War_Stories__Fall_of_Poland/

Greetings once again to our glorious Panzer Corps 2 community!

We have one final Dev Diary on Fall of Poland to share with you today, including an announcement for its release date. But before that, we wanted to have a quick word about...

[h2]Panzer Corps Day[/h2]
Wow! What an amazing success Panzer Corps Days turned out to be! Our expectations on player numbers and stream watchers were completely blown away. It’s hard to fathom tens of thousands of players tuning into our channels to celebrate Panzer Corps Day with us, but that’s exactly what happened. As always, we are humbled by having so many people interested in and playing Panzer Corps and Panzer Corps 2 even after so many years, you all are amazing!

As someone who has made 144 Panzer Corps Grand Campaign scenarios and 172 Panzer Corps 2 Axis Operations Campaign scenarios and worked on so many aspects of Panzer Corps, it has been such an incredible journey I’ve been on with all of you. Thank you, once again.

Here’s to hoping we’ll be able to celebrate Panzer Corps Day every year from here on out, and make them even bigger and better!
- Content Designer Kerensky

And now, back to Fall of Poland!

[h2]Integrated Image System[/h2]


So the biggest new feature we have not yet talked about with Fall of Poland is we have a brand new integrated image and messaging system now. This is something we know players have been wanting for a very long time, and it’s great to finally have it.

The artworks we have been sprinkling into Fall of Poland storefronts and past Dev Diaries are the original works we will be integrating into the scenario message event system.



As you can see, we’re debuting this system with War Stories Fall of Poland, but we’re excited to invoke this system to improve the flavour and context of these mid scenario messages in future Panzer Corps 2 content.



Additionally, we’re hoping this will be a boon for creators of custom and user made content and campaigns. It’s going to be very exciting to see what kind of imagery our players use to enhance scenario events. Real historical imagery? Custom artworks? Iconic World War II photograpgy? We can’t wait to see the awesome WW2 theme visuals people come up with.

[h2]New Polish Cavalry[/h2]
From our last Dev Diary, we mentioned some new Polish Cavalry units, but we didn’t show them off. Time to fix that!


As you can see, this is the new Polish Uhlan Cavalry unit in its default form. They are mounted, with excellent mobility, but rather poor combat stats. This form is meant for rapid movement, to either cross the battlefield quickly or participate in assisting with long distance flanking and encircling efforts.

The switch form of this unit, the soldiers of the Polish Uhlan will dismount from their horses, and fight on foot as traditional WW2 era infantry fighting forces would.


Here you can see their movement radius is significantly lower than their mounted switch form, but their combat performance is dramatically improved!
The Uhlan is definitely an extremely flexible and potent new unit for Poland to deploy, just remember to manually switch them to the form you need them to operate in!

[h2]Forced Withdrawal[/h2]
One final item we wanted to discuss. And actually, this comes from early internal discussion on how do you make a Poland 1939 campaign from the Polish perspective that isn’t just about ‘getting your teeth kicked in’.

To help with the historical reality of the immense difficulty the Polish forces faced in September of 1939, we have a new sort of objective, the Forced Withdrawal objective.

Basically, for players who want to fight to the bitter end and see what the Polish were up against, this new objective type allows for a nice out from the historical result of many of these battles of the Polish Campaign.

A good example would be to look at the Battle of Mlawa scenario.


You are tasked with defending the line here, but you will very quickly find the German attack forces to be overwhelming, as they definitely were historically. We designed Forced Withdrawal objectives to allow players who want to fight against impossible odds to do so if they really feel like it, but we don’t force everyone to fight impossible battles that break history.

As they say, discretion is the better part of valor, and triggering Forced Withdrawal objectives are going to be a way for players to yield the field, to continue to play through the campaign and also preserve their CORE forces for the battles ahead, instead of expecting players to fight and win against impossibly difficult odds. This is a very overwhelming amount of Luftwaffe aircraft pummelling your forces!


[h2]Conclusion[/h2]
Thanks again for joining us for this third and last Developer Diary on the latest upcoming Panzer Corps 2 DLC Fall of Poland. We’re aiming for a launch on August 29th, the end of this month! We are looking forward to getting this DLC out in time for the historical anniversary of the beginning of the Battle of Poland, which we all know is September 1st, 1939.

By deploying the DLC a few days in advance of September 1st, we want to make absolutely certain our players will be fully prepared to experience and fight their own Battle for Poland on its fateful anniversary day!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/3023770/Panzer_Corps_2_War_Stories__Fall_of_Poland/